Write less. Remember more.
That's the whole notation. Two minutes to learn, ten seconds to use.
"They're offering 20% more and the work sounds genuinely interesting. But it's two hours of commuting a day, so I'd want to ask about working from home a few days. They need an answer by Friday. Something about the manager felt a bit off, though I can't really say what. I think I'm going to take it."
57 words · one paragraph
Take the job? [2026-03-04] + 20% more money + Work I'd actually want to talk about - Two hours of commuting a day ? Could I work from home three days * They need an answer by Friday ~ Something about the manager felt off
39 words · six separate claims
Same thought, less typing. And ~ keeps the doubt you can't argue for — in prose, that's the first line you talk yourself out of.
No account needed. Just type:
Start each line with + - ! ? (No formatting or correct grammar needed)
"Copy with AI prompt" adds the instructions that teach any chatbot to read what you just wrote. Paste the whole thing and ask it anything.
Public domain. Nothing to sign up for.
Copy one, paste it at the top of any chat. The converter turns a messy dump of thinking into PlusMinusBang — start there.
npx skills add j333t/pmb
Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, Windsurf, Gemini and more. Then say "pmb this".
On Claude.ai: download SKILL.md, then Settings → Capabilities → Skills → upload.
plusminusbang.com/pmb.md
Under 2,000 tokens. Hand the link to any model, or read it yourself.
Important decisions happen largely in your head. Even when you write them down, what survives is the conclusion — not the tradeoffs you weighed, not what changed your mind, not the doubt you couldn't name.
So months later you defend choices blindly, repeat solved mistakes, and rebuild the same arguments from scratch.
The lower the friction, the more you'll actually use it. Start messy. Rough notes beat perfect prose you never write.
Gut feelings become actual reasons. You find out what you think by writing it.
A similar decision comes up. You don't start from zero — you build on what you already worked out.
Dozens of decisions on record, and the patterns start showing. How you weigh risk. What actually changes your mind. Where you keep getting it wrong.
You get better at thinking by studying yourself.
For every single reason captured, the value doesn't add. It multiplies and compounds.
One decision captured today helps five people next month. Helps fifty people next year.
PMB is useful anywhere the reasoning matters as much as the decision.
It's actually faster than writing sentences. Just put the symbol and dump your thoughts. After a week, it feels weird not to use it.
Pros/cons lists are flat. PMB shows critical facts, tracks how your thinking changes over time, and captures why you finally decided. Read the guide.
Anywhere you can type: Apple Notes, Notion, Obsidian, plain text files, paper napkins, or even a WhatsApp msg to yourself. The format works everywhere.
Not yet. PMB works in any app you already use. No vendor lock-in, no learning curve.
Absolutely. Store entries in your team wiki, share via Slack, or use shared docs. It creates a record of "why" for the whole organization.
Perfect—that's what the dates are for. Just add a new dated entry showing what changed. The evolution is the insight.
Meeting decisions, hiring notes, relationship logs, sales call takeaways, SOP updates, policy exceptions, employee review logs, research quotes, organizational memory, etc.
Great! But if we all have a commong syntax, its easy to share, with the best possible symbols already thought through. Also, AI requires similarity to train on.